Summer Instructional Development Professorships

Proposals due by noon March 1, 2010. Late or incomplete proposal will not be accepted.

Click here for a list of past awardees and their projects

The Office of Instructional Development and the Faculty Instructional Development Committee (FIDC) each year awards a number of Summer Instructional Development Professorships (SIDP) to faculty working on innovative instructional projects. The Professorships are intended to support instructional development that has the potential to improve the quality of teaching at UND and goes beyond normal course development.  Designed to allow faculty to work full-time on instructional development for four weeks during the summer, these Professorships provide a salary stipend of $4000.  Note:  Because of funding restrictions, work on SIDPs must be done before the end of the fiscal year, June 30.)  The Faculty Instructional Development Committee (FIDC) reviews SIDP proposals.

Eligibility

All faculty are eligible to apply for a SIDP (GTAs and visiting professors are not eligible) Faculty must commit to spending four weeks of full-time summer work on their projects, typically focusing on a course or courses to be offered the following academic year. Applicants who have held Summer Instructional Development Professorships in the past may apply again, but priority will be given to those who have not had recent support. Note: If you have a Final Report overdue, you are ineligible for additional OID funding until the report is submitted.

Criteria

Projects will be evaluated according to the following four criteria:

1. Rationale for the Proposed Work is Well-Established
What is the project’s significance to the curriculum? Does it address a significant need or opportunity?

2. Proposed Work Requires a Time Investment Beyond Routine Planning
What work will you do? How much time appears necessary for this work? Is the work above and beyond “routine” course/curriculum planning?  Is this the sort of project best tackled with an uninterrupted period of four weeks of full-time work?

3. Project Pedagogy
Will this project have a high impact on student learning? How does this project relate to your pedagogical approach and philosophy of teaching? Is your proposed project consistent with best practices in higher education? Is this project particularly innovative? Can this project serve as a model of practice for others?

4. Assessment Plans are Clearly Described and Reasonable
How are you going to evaluate the success of your work? How will you know the proposed project has met the need or opportunity identified in the earlier section? How are you going to assess student learning that occurs as a result of your project?

Proposal Format Proposals should be clear, complete & well organized with the following three sections (in this order): I. A Cover Sheet which is found here. Please copy the template from our website and paste it into your word processing program, then enter the information and print it from your computer. II. A Project Description that addresses the following four criteria listed above. Please use these headings to organize this section. 1. Rationale Clearly describe the need or opportunity addressed by the proposed SIDP Project. Provide all relevant background information. What needs or opportunities will you be addressing? What course or courses will you be working on? Who normally takes the course? How often is it offered? How many students generally enroll? Is the course already part of the regular curriculum in your department? If not, what is its status vis-à-vis the department, college, and university curriculum committees? The Committee needs these details to put your proposal in context. 2. Investment of Time Detail your work plan. Clearly describe what you will do with your time during these 4 weeks of summer. How does the work you propose go beyond "normal course preparation"? What activities will you engage in? What products will you produce? 3. Pedagogy Clearly describe how the proposed project will impact student learning. How does this project relate to your pedagogical approach and philosophy of teaching? What is new or innovative about the pedagogy? How does the proposed work reflect best teaching practices  (for example do you  incorporate active learning and engagement strategies? do you use a variety of graded and ungraded assessments of student learning?) What strategies are incorporated to promote active learning, student engagement, higher order thinking (ala Bloom’s taxonomy) or other known strategies for enhancing learning? 4. Assessment How will you evaluate your work? (For example asking colleagues to review a syllabus and course materials and or writing a reflective self-assessment of the course before, during, and after you teach it, etc.) How will you know the proposed project has met the need or opportunity identified in the earlier section?  How will you assess the impact of the proposed work on student learning? What direct and indirect assessment methods will give you meaningful data on student learning in the course? III. A Supporting Letter from your Chair, showing a clear understanding of the project and the way it will contribute to the instructional goals of the department. (If you are the department chair, ask for a letter of support from your dean.)

Application and Review Procedure

Proposals for Summer 2010 professorships are due by noon on March 1, 2010. Send or bring the application to the Office of Instructional Development, O'Kelly 300, Stop 7104. Awardees are selected by the Faculty Instructional Development Committee. To discuss ideas and draft proposals before submitting a final proposal, call OID at (7-4233) or e-mail at oid@und.nodak.edu .

Final Reports

Summer Professorship recipients are asked to file a brief (one paragraph) Preliminary Report on their activity upon completion of their 4 weeks of summer work. More comprehensive Final Reports are due within six months after their project is completed. In some cases, that deadline can be extended further to allow for a more complete report. Final Report Guidelines are generally the same as for other OID grants.